The ongoing crisis has left the city without safe drinking water for over two years, but the state claims water deliveries are too much to ask.

Michigan is fighting a judge’s order to deliver water to Flint residents who do not have safe drinking water, claiming it would be overly expensive for taxpayers and require a “herculean effort.

Last week, U.S. District Judge David Lawson https://www.scribd.com/document/331477044/Michigan-Fights-To-Avoid-Flint-Water-Delivery"}}">ordered the state to deliver four cases of bottled water weekly to each resident who needs it in the wake of the ongoing crisis that has left the city with lead-contaminated water since 2014. Attorneys for the state filed a motion Thursday to stay the order while they appeal the decision in a lawsuit brought by several advocacy groups.

“The herculean effort required by the court order would be on the magnitude of a large-scale military operation,” Anna Heaton, spokeswoman for Gov. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/rick-snyder/"}}">Rick Snyder (R), wrote in a statement emailed to The Huffington Post. “The resources to accomplish this would only be available through the activation of the National Guard or the hiring of several logistics companies.”

The state’s motion says it would cost at least $10.5 million monthly to deliver the estimated 400,000 cases of water each week, and warns that using Flint relief money for water delivery could defund other efforts like nutritional assistance programs for kids.

Lawson’s order “increases the scope of the State’s emergency response to an unnecessary and insurmountable degree,” according to the state’s filing.

“It’s sad that the State of Michigan continues to disenfranchise the community of Flint,” Pastor Allen Overton with the Concerned Pastors for Social Action said in a statement. The group is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“What happened to Governor Snyder’s pledge that he would work to fix Flint’s drinking water crisis? This action today inflicts more harm on a city that’s already hurting,” Overton added.

The state argues that 90 percent of houses and most apartments have water filters installed, bottled water is available at pickup locations throughout the city and responders already have a system to deliver water to residents who can’t pick it up on their own.

The state does not have to deliver water to households if they verify that they have working water filters installed, Lawson wrote. The problem is that providing filters hasn’t guaranteed that they are installed or used correctly, he said.

Lawson also noted testimony from residents who hadn’t been able to receive water despite state efforts.

“[The plaintiffs’] evidence raises serious questions as to the efficacy of the emergency response,” he wrote. “Indeed, the endeavor of hunting for water has become a dominant activity in some Flint residents’ daily lives.”

The brief cited the drawback of adding millions of plastic bottles to Flint’s trash and recycling, which Heaton called a “potential public health risk.”

They also said logistical issues would be a major hurdle: It might be impossible to find a warehouse big enough to store the necessary water and they’d have to obtain more than 100 new trucks, the motion states.

In 2014, after Flint left Detroit’s water system and started drawing water from the Flint River, residents began complaining about their tap water’s smell, taste and appearance, and claimed it was causing health issues. Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality initially denied that there were any issues with the water.

The city, under the state’s direction, had failed to treat the water with chemicals that prevent corrosion, allowing lead that lines pipes to leach into the water. Any amount of lead exposure is a health risk, particularly for young children, and can stunt their brain development.

State and federal regulators eventually confirmed that water samples at Flint homes had dangerous levels of lead and acknowledged a pediatrician’s findings that the number of children in the city with elevated lead levels in their blood had increased dramatically. The city switched back to the Detroit water system, which draws from Lake Huron, last fall.

Both Snyder and the the federal government have been widely condemned for their handling of the water crisis, with some critics calling the denial of an essential service to the city’s predominantly black residents, many who are poor, a case of environmental racism.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the plaintiffs in the current lawsuit, criticized Michigan for again denying help to residents.

“Seeking to delay the federal court order that the State immediately fix Flint’s water crisis is an obvious insult to the people of Flint, whose tap water has been contaminated with lead for more than two years,” NRDC Midwest Director Henry Henderson said in a statement.

Our outdated infrastructure will fall apart if we don't invest in repairing it — that's just physics.

The horrible, preventable crisis in Flint, Michigan shows that when the government shortchanges our infrastructure, people pay the price.

Flint has become a living hell for its residents.

The water is brown, poisoned with lead, and too corrosive to use on skin or clothes. Scientists have predicted that all the children poisoned by lead will suffer physical and developmental problems as they grow up. Houses have damaged pipes, and the city claims it doesn’t have enough resources to replace them.

Worst of all, state officials knew about this crisis and could have prevented it for as little as $100 a day. But Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and the emergency manager he appointed to govern Flint failed to protect the city’s residents.

Flint isn’t the only city that’s suffering. Across the country, aging pipes, roads, and sewage systems are putting families at risk.

Yet the United States hasn’t embarked on an infrastructure project on the scale that’s needed since the Great Depression, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt created hundreds of thousands of jobs by initiating the largest public works project in history.

With so much infrastructure overdue for a major overhaul, it’s time to put Americans back to work by investing in the roads and pipes that keep our communities functioning and safe.

The People’s Budget, a federal spending plan developed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, commits $1 trillion to upgrading and replacing infrastructure across the country. It specifically allocates $765 million to replace the pipes in Flint and provide its residents with the services they need to recover from this horrible tragedy.

This shouldn’t be a political issue — our outdated infrastructure will fall apart if we don’t repair it. That’s physics.

But the political implications are grim. Crumbling bridges and ramshackle school buildings disproportionately impact low-income communities and communities of color, where infrastructure is often already underfunded and under-maintained. And thanks to lower property taxes, local officials often have little incentive or ability to make repairs.

Moreover, these communities are more likely to be near environmentally hazardous waste treatment and power plants. And they’re less likely to be adequately protected against risks of flooding or other environmental disasters — as we saw with the devastating damage to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Communities affected by such catastrophes take years, if not decades, to recover. Meanwhile residents suffer as companies and factories leave, taking with them not only jobs, but much of the local tax base. Residents lose their livelihoods as well as their means of funding repairs.

Yet it’s lives — not just livelihoods — that are at stake here. Communities like Flint need a federal budget that makes a real commitment to helping them rebuild and renew. And all of us need a budget that creates jobs, improves communities, and invests in the services and programs that people need to recover from crises.

We need new spending priorities that will restore prosperity and invest in American communities.

In short, we need the People’s Budget — and we need it now. The Flints of America can’t wait any longer.

In their hasty scramble to blame the Flint water crisis on anything — anything at all — other than the regime of Emergency Managers and phony corporate “privatization” that Reason has been promoting for years in Michigan, Reason writers are forming a circular firing squad.

He manages to indict government while exempting neoliberal government policy agendas as such from any of the opprobium associated with government. By “government,” he means a very select and limited part of government: Flint’s locally elected crime lords, in the mould of Kilpatrick and Conyers. He strenuously denies that the category of government crime lords includes Snyder or his Emergency Manager (in fact Soave’s article includes a flat-out assertion that Snyder didn’t make the decision, suggesting privileged access to the 2013 emails that nobody else has seen).

But at most the Flint City Council and Mayor had the power to propose, not to dispose — the water supply switchover had to be signed off on by Snyder’s Emergency Manager, with the permission of the Treasurer (and Snyder’s behind-the-scenes approval as well). Despite Soave’s disingenuous claim that “[t]he emergency manager… says the decision was made by the city long before his appointment,” the actual link he provides says something vastly different. The person he misleadingly refers to simply as “the emergency manager,” Darnell Earley, would more accurately have been described as “an emergency manager.” He was actually only one in a series of Emergency Managers appointed over Flint. In fact Earley’s predecessor, Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz, signed off on the proposal. All Earley did was oversee the implementation of his predecessor’s decision — and toast the switchover in a public ceremony. Although the City Council started the ball rolling, its vote was without effect without Emergency Manager approval. And the record shows ongoing involvement in the decision-making process by all the successive Emergency Managers in Flint. You might almost suspect Soave of counting on his readers not to check his source against his distorted summary for themselves. The fact that Snyder released his Flint-related emails only for 2014 and 2015, and not for 2013 (when the decision was made), also suggest more involvement than some people might like to admit.

Further, Soave makes it clear that the real fault lies, not with neoliberal austerity policies as such, but with — wait for it — those wicked public employee unions, for making Detroit water so darned costly. Flint had no choice but to switch its water source — the unions made them do it: “let’s not forget the reason why local authorities felt the need to find a cheaper water source: Flint is broke and its desperately poor citizens can’t afford higher taxes to pay the pensions of city government retirees.”

Only as it turned out, Soave’s “cheaper water” cover story falls apart. Detroit was actually offering water cheaper. Shortly after Soave’s attempt at a face-saving explanation, it emerged that Detroit Water and Sewage Department offered a deal far cheaper for local ratepayers than anything the Karengonda Water Authority could offer. Far from switching over to “save money,” Snyder and the Emergency Manager were obsessively promoting the KWA project to the point that they were willing to charge ratepayers more. And not only that, they were willing to switch over before the KWA had even completed its new Lake Huron pipeline and water treatment plant, and rely on water of questionable quality from the Flint River in the interim. At any rate, it stretches credulity to imagine that Snyder or anyone in his chain of command had any pristine “free market” motivations, given that his chief of staff at the time, Dennis Muchmore, was a Nestle lobbyist and Muchmore’s wife was Nestle’s public spokesperson. That’s right — Snyder’s administration is infiltrated at the very highest levels by corporate interests whose business model depends on enclosure and subsidized extraction of the water commons.

Shikha Dalmia comes in with her own rival target for blame (“The Flint Water Crisis Is the Result of a Stimulus Project Gone Wrong,” Jan. 25): The Flint water crisis really happened because of “a stimulus project gone wrong,” you see! The problem is that her story directly contradicts Soave’s. In the face of his discomfiture she’s willing to make a tactical retreat and regroup, and accept the fact that the Emergency Managers passed up a deal to pay less. Snyder, the Emergency Managers and the local government all saw the KWA’s development of its own independent treatment plant for Flint as a way of stimulating local economic growth.

So Snyder and everybody on down the chain of command were really willing to pay a higher rate to the KWA out of an ideological commitment to building out its infrastructure as a local economic stimulus project — it wasn’t really “privatization” or “austerity” at all!

Never mind the possibility that Snyder’s promotion of the KWA on the DWSD’s old turf, and the Detroit Emergency Manager’s splitting of the DWSD into two new entities, might reflect a policy of fragmenting the DWSD and opening all the individual parts up to privatization deals overseen by the Emergency Managers (perish the thought!) Never mind rumors that Snyder also envisioned piping in water from Lake Huron to service fracking operations.

No, let’s stick to Dalmia’s unjustifiable dichotomy between neoliberalism, austerity and privatization, on the one hand, and all that sleazy economic stimulus and other “crony capitalism” on the other. Question: What real-world government privatization or “market reform” agenda has ever not involved government-corporate collusion, or had as its primary end the public subsidization of private profit? Ever?

Unlike Soave, Dalmia is also a little more open to the possibility that Snyder and his Emergency Managers might have been involved in the decision — but it was really the lure of economic stimulus that led them astray from their previously pure agenda of “free market reform” and “privatization.” The devil made them do it.

Dalmia misses the point. If her argument about the inherent corruptness of all government as the cause of the Flint disaster proves anything, it proves too much. It’s a weapon that turns on the one wielding it.

Dalmia’s argument about the corruption of government applies equally to her own body of writings at Reason, in which she repeatedly equates this or that neoliberal government policy to “free market reform” or “free trade.” For all her talk of getting government out of things altogether, she’s waxed enthusiastic about school system policies to privatize schools’ food, busing and custodial services as a way of bypassing union bargaining power. She’s also strongly endorsed the protectionist, mercantilist regulatory regimes under NAFTA and TPP as “free trade,” as well as so-called “right-to-work” regulations by which legislatures insert themselves into the collective-bargaining process and override privately negotiated labor contracts. In fact Dalmia in one place (“Shikha Dalmia: The Next Battleground in the State Labor Wars,” WSJ, Sept. 30, 2012) denounces a ballot initiative to strike down wage and hours regulatory statutes that interfered with the terms of labor contracts as “a breathtaking power grab that would turn unions into a super legislature” — language one one would normally associate with lamentations about lese majeste against “our government” at Daily Kos or HuffPo.

Dalmia never makes it clear just how a neoliberal government “market reform” policy can ever be carried out except through government, or how governments can ever carry out such privatization and deregulation policies without falling victim to the same cronyism and insider politics as the Flint water deal. It seems she has a set of portable goalposts, where neoliberal government “reforms” like privatization, NAFTA, TPP and right-to-work laws are good — until somebody inevitably gets caught with their hand in the till, at which time it ceases to count any more as a “market reform” because the government’s doing it.

But let’s get something straight: Snyder and his Emergency Managers never had any “pure intentions” to be led away from. “Crony capitalism” and crooked “public-private partnerships” are what neoliberal privatization regimes like Snyder’s Emergency Managers are all about. More than that, they’re what any kind of state-driven “free market reform” lobbied for by the Kochs and their ilk is about. There’s no kind of government “market reform” policy except for the “crony capitalist” kind.

The state, by its very nature, is the executive committee of an economic ruling class. Any time a government policy-maker, no matter how much they talk about “free enterprise” and the “private sector,” pursues a “privatization” regime, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s really a corrupt deal between business and government to guarantee monopoly profits at the expense of consumers, taxpayers or both. And you can likewise bet that when a corporation negotiates a “privatization” deal with a government, it’s got nothing to do with “free markets.” It’s about reaping where they didn’t sow; it’s about acquiring an infrastructure built at public expense at sweetheart prices, through collusion with government, so they can loot and asset-strip it.

Simply put, there’s no way Dalmia can consistently apply her “it was government’s fault” analysis of the Flint disaster without also disavowing the entire range of “free trade,” “privatization” and “free market” reform policies — government policies — that she and like-minded people at Reason have endorsed over the years.

If you start with a natural resource commons, with an infrastructure developed at the expense of the user community itself, the question of whether to hand it over to administration by a featherbedding state bureaucracy or by a politically connected corporation isn’t a choice between two genuine alternatives. It’s just two variations on the same theme: expropriation, enclosure and tribute.

The relationship between government and corporate entities, in the life cycle of public utilities infrastructure, is a symbiotic one. As I described it in an earlier article about the corporate privatization of water in Detroit:

First, a basic infrastructure is created at taxpayer expense, either funded directly by taxpayer revenues or by bonds that will be repaid by the taxpayers. When it’s a country outside the US — especially a Third World country — foreign aid or World Bank loans may also help fund the project.

The infrastructure’s main purpose is usually to provide below-cost water or electric utilities, transportation, etc., to big business interests. In the Third World, that means foreign aid and World Bank loans to build the local power, water and transportation infrastructure needed to make Western capital investments (like offshored production) profitable. In California, the whole corporate agribusiness sector depends on massively subsidized water from government-funded dams. And… large-scale business and industrial water consumers in Detroit have received preferential treatment like forbearance on tens of thousands of dollars in past-due water bills, while ordinary household ratepayers in poor neighborhoods are treated without mercy.

Second, Disaster Capitalists (to use Naomi Klein’s term) seize on opportunities presented by US-sponsored coups (like Pinochet and Yeltsin), economic meltdowns (the European periphery and Detroit) and military regime change (the US invasion of Iraq) to coerce governments into selling off that debt-financed infrastructure to global capital. And the Disaster Capitalist toolkit includes using such debt (either to bondholders or to foreign lenders), and fiscal insolvency from debt, in exactly the same way as debt peonage or debt to a company store — to blackmail government entities into “privatizing” their infrastructure to “private” (but politically connected) corporations or to domestic kleptocrats. The purchase price is a sweetheart deal, pennies on the dollar, because of the purchasing corporations’ insider ties to the political authorities selling off the goods.

Third, governments frequently spend more in capital investments to make the “privatized” infrastructure salable than they realize from the sale of it.

Fourth, the first item on the agenda of the corporation acquiring the newly “privatized” infrastructure is typically asset-stripping — jacking up rates, using the revenues as a cash cow, and simultaneously starving it of needed maintenance expenditures. The asset-stripping frequently yields more in returns, in a short time, than the company paid for the infrastructure.

And fifth — as Nicholas Hildyard pointed out in “The Myth of the Minimalist State: Free Market Ambiguities” (Corner House Briefing 05, March 1998) — far from operating as a “free market” actor, the newly “privatized” utility or other infrastructure usually operates within a web of state subsidies and protections that more or less guarantee it a profit.

Yet the practical outcome of these policies has not, in most cases, been to diminish either the state’s institutional power or its spending. Instead, it has redirected them elsewhere. It has also strengthened the power of many Northern nations to intervene in the economic affairs of other countries, notably the indebted countries of the South, the emerging economies of the former Soviet Union, and the weaker industrialised partners of trade blocs such as the European Union….

Far from doing away with state bureaucracy, free market [sic] policies have in fact reorganised it. While the privatisation of state industries and assets has certainly cut down the direct involvement of the state in the production and distribution of many goods and services, the process has been accompanied by new state regulations, subsidies and institutions aimed at introducing and entrenching a “favourable environment” for the newly-privatised industries.

Anarchist Colin Ward, in his large body of work on the history of social services, has a similar framework. For Ward, the first step is the development of a natural resource commons (like water) or a public service infrastructure (schools, healthcare, housing) as a self-organized, cooperative effort by the user community themselves: working class health insurance mutuals and sick benefit societies, cooperative hospitals and schools, and the like. E.P. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class and Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid are full of examples. The next step is for the self-aggrandizing state, whether under a right-winger like Bismarck or under Old Left types like Lenin and Harold Wilson, to nationalize the working class’s own self-organized institutions, and gradually eviscerate their human capital under bureaucratic management. The final step is to sell the state bureaucracy off to a politically connected corporation at collusive prices, or contract the bureaucracy’s functions off to a corporation at taxpayer expense.

That’s what real-world privatization, as carried out by any party that’s likely to hold power, always amounts to. Always. Put not your faith in princes.

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan is the perfect case for why our country needs more funding for infrastructure, not less.

It is unconscionable that Flint’s water supply has been poisoned with lead. Residents lack access to basic daily necessities because of the unsafe water supply and must rely on daily rations of bottled water. They continue to be charged for toxic and corrosive water, even as they lack access to much-needed services. Scientists predict that young children who have been exposed will suffer developmentally and physically. The EPA estimates that more than 10 million homes receive their water through lead pipes in cities and towns across the nation. These all need replacement.

Lack of investment in infrastructure modernization has compounded this devastating crisis. Officials delayed their response to the contamination, and now residents are paying the price. Families have waited for almost two years for ongoing problems to be addressed. Meanwhile, residents have numerous health problems and desperately need access to better services to address the effects of lead poisoning.

Flint is only one of many American communities that suffers from a contaminated water supply, and this is not the only type of man-made disaster that our nation has faced. We have the opportunity to learn from past crises, such as the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. No one should continue to suffer after a health and environmental crisis has been identified. Our federal budget must include investments in infrastructure and technology that will employ American workers to fix and maintain local resources and prevent disasters.

Replacing lead pipes, rebuilding water mains and water treatment plants, and increasing funds for water testing and quality control, will create tens of thousands of jobs with good pay and doing good work. Such job creation is essential to close the wealth gap and for long term economic growth.

The federal budget used to include major funding for water treatment plants and other preventative measures that would help us avoid man-made catastrophes. It’s time to bring our infrastructure into the 21st century in order to address current crises and prevent future disasters.

We have to invest in the future, and that means committing funds to towns like Flint so that all Americans can have the resources and quality of life they deserve. We support the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget because it recognizes that by investing in improving infrastructure, we invest in improving the lives of children and families across the United States.

To date, over 25,000 children in Flint, Michigan, have been exposed to lead contamination from the city’s water supply. How did the water get that way?

Lee-Anne Walters and her family in Flint, Michigan, drank water laced with hazardous levels of lead contamination for nearly eight months, beginning in the spring of 2014.

The water was brown. Her three-year-old son Gavin broke out in a rash every time he had any contact with the water in their home. He would have clear water lines on his body after getting out of the bath. He stopped growing. The whole family broke out in rashes five times, and doctors treated them for scabies.

On April 2, 2015, Gavin was diagnosed with lead poisoning. Today he is one of at least 27,000 children in the city who have been exposed to lead contamination, according to local news sources.

Even though the Walters had installed plastic plumbing in their home, lead from the city’s aging potable water distribution system was seeping into the drinking water. And cities all across the US are equally vulnerable.

In an attempt to save money, Flint stopped sourcing drinking water from Detroit on April 25, 2014, switching instead to the Flint River. In December, Walters alerted city and state officials to the presence of lead in her home water supply. When they failed to take decisive action, she turned to Marc Edwards, a renowned expert on water treatment and corrosion at Virginia Tech, whose prior research forced the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to acknowledge publishing a “scientifically indefensible” report about Washington DC’s compromised municipal water supply.

“We coordinated a very thorough sampling of the water in her home,” Edwards told the Guardian. “And that data showed the worst example of lead and water contamination we’ve encountered in 25 years.”

Walters says she recorded an average lead concentration level of 2,000 ppb (parts per billion); the highest level she recorded was 13,200 ppb. These levels are more than 200-1,300 times higher than World Health Organization standards of 10ppb, and some exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criterion for “hazardous waste” of 5,000 ppb, according to Edwards.

Awarded $50,000 by the National Science Foundation to further investigate Flint’s water distribution system, Edwards found that chloride concentrations in the city’s drinking water had soared from 11.4 mg/l to 92 mg/l after switching to the Flint River. He said high chloride levels corrode plumbing infrastructure, causing lead particles to separate from the pipe and leach into the water.

This could have been prevented if, in accordance with the federal Lead and Copper Rule passed in July 1998, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) insisted on implementing a corrosion control system when they switched their water source.

The MDEQ never required Flint to install corrosion control systems, nor did it set water quality parameters for the new Flint River source water, according to a September post on the Flint Water Study website run by Edwards and others.

Edwards wrote that after the switch to the Flint River water, the corrosiveness level as measured by the Larson Iron Corrosion Index rose from “0.54 (low corrosion) to 2.3 (very high corrosion) and the chloride to sulfate mass ratio (CSMR) index for lead corrosion increased from 0.45 (low corrosion) to 1.6 (very high corrosion)”.

MDEQ’s failure to require a corrosion inhibitor is what created the Flint water crisis in the first place, according to Edwards. In an attempt to save even more money after the switch, he says, the city managers opted not to install one voluntarily.

In a statement released in October, MDEQ director Dan Wyant acknowledged the state’s error. “It recently has become clear that our drinking water program staff made a mistake while working with the City of Flint,” he said. “Simply stated, staff employed a federal protocol they believed was appropriate, and it was not. The water testing steps followed would have been correct for a city less than 50,000 people, but not for a city of nearly 100,000.”

The main contributor of the Flint River’s high chloride concentrations, according to Edwards, is road salt combined with the natural salt content of the river and the additional chloride the city uses to clean the water. “In US cities where ice is a problem in winter, the average road salt use per person per year is 135 pounds,” he says. “It’s incredible. In many northeastern cities because of road salt use, salt content in rivers has doubled in the last 20 years.”

Dr Carla Koretsky, professor of aqueous geochemistry and biochemistry at Western Michigan University, has spent the last six years studying the effects of road salt on urban lake biochemistry.

“There’s been a tremendous increase in the use of salt across the northern US and essentially globally as well. We’re building more roads and we’re salting more,” she says. “What happens when you put salt on the ground – it dissolves and goes into the surface water and eventually that gets channeled into Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes.”

It is partly for this reason, Koretsky notes, using sand is not necessarily an ideal alternative to road salt. Not only do sand particles cause respiratory problems in people, but it also causes turbidity as it moves through the water cycle.

Currently the US does not consider chloride to be a pollutant. Koretsky notes the EPA only monitors the ambient or aesthetic quality of chloride, because it is not considered dangerous to human health.

Canada, on the other hand, lists road salts on the second Priority Substances List (PSL2). Canada’s 1999 Environmental Protection Act deems road salts “toxic” based on available data: “[Road salts] may have an immediate or long-term harmful effect on the environment or its biological diversity or that constitute or may constitute a danger to the environment on which life depends.”

While Koretsky has not specifically studied the Flint River, she notes because rivers have a faster water flow than lakes, chloride concentrations are more easily diluted. “Especially if you stop putting salt in, the river is going to flush it out pretty quickly,” she says.

With plenty of precipitation and fresh water moving into shallow groundwater, Korestsky estimates salt concentrations could probably be cleared out in a matter of decades – if the source of the salt is cut off.

The executive director of the Flint River Watershed Coalition in Michigan, Rebecca Fedewa, says despite national furor over the city’s contaminated water, the Flint is a thriving, vibrant river system.

She maintains preliminary results of recent tests show the Flint River is well within healthy chloride concentrations, though that research is not yet complete. She says rather than look to the river for answers, we should be looking to the officials responsible for botching the water treatment process.

“Flint has been hit by one thing or another,” Fedewa says. “It’s a really resilient community and people love their city. This is just another tough thing for people to have to deal with, and they shouldn’t have to.

This is really [about] the local state agencies dropping the ball. It’s not fair for the locals who are having to deal with it, and it’s not fair for the river to take the brunt.”

Walters will be heading to Washington DC in late January to talk to the EPA’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water.

“What happened in Flint has the potential to happen throughout the US,” she says. “And it has to be stopped.”

New emails reveal that top advisers knew about problems with Flint water as far back as 2014, reinvigorating calls that 'the Governor must resign'

Reigniting calls for Rick Snyder's resignation, emails released Friday reveal that advisers to the Michigan governor knew that Flint's water was toxic as far back as October 2014.

"My Mom is a City resident. Nice to know she's drinking water with elevated chlorine levels and fecal coliform," the governor's chief legal counsel said in an email sent just three weeks before the Republican governor's re-election, according to the Detroit Free Press.

After examining over 500 emails released by the governor's office, the Detroit Newsreported that "[t]wo top advisers to Gov. Rick Snyder urged switching Flint back to Detroit’s water system in October 2014, after General Motors Co. said the city’s heavily chlorinated river water was rusting engine parts."

"There's no reasonable person who can believe at this point that every top adviser to Rick Snyder knew that there was an issue, but Snyder knew nothing," said Lonnie Scott, executive director of Lansing-based watchdog group Progress Michigan, in a press release. "At worst he's been lying all along and at best he's the worst manager on the planet. Under either scenario he's clearly unfit to lead our state and he should resign immediately."

[...] for returning the city to Detroit’s system drawn from Lake Huron, saying it made economic and environmental sense for an "urgent matter to fix." She cited bacterial contamination in the treated river water and reduced quality that caused "GM to leave due to rusted parts."

[...] Michael Gadola, then the governor’s legal counsel, echoed those concerns in an e-mail responding to Brader and sent to the governor’s top aides. He called the idea of using the Flint River as a drinking water source “downright scary.”

Flint "should try to get back on the Detroit system as a stopgap ASAP before this thing gets too far out of control," Gadola wrote 12 minutes after Brader's e-mail.

"Without question, Snyder and his entire administration have failed Flint and the residents of Michigan," Scott said. "We knew that there was a reason the Governor was refusing to release these documents and now it is all too clear: to him Flint families weren’t as important as the bottom line on his spreadsheet. There are no more excuses and no more scapegoats. The Governor must resign."

Academic pressure and financial motives has prohibited scientists from asking important questions

"Academic research and scientists in this country are no longer deserving of the public trust," declared Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech civil engineering professor who helped expose the Flint water crisis.

In an interview published in the Chronicle of Higher Education on Tuesday, Edwards explained how the pressures put on academics to secure funding are forcing scientists to abandon work done in the public interest and that similar financial motives are causing government science agencies to ignore inconvenient truths—like high levels of lead in public drinking water.

He said he's "very concerned about the culture of academia in this country and the perverse incentives that are given to young faculty." Edwards describes the culture as a "hedonistic treadmill," with "extraordinary" pressures to pursue funding, publication, and academic clout. Meanwhile, he said, "the idea of science as a public good is being lost."

Edwards, whose research also uncovered high levels of lead in the Washington, D.C. water supply in 2003, was tapped by Flint residents to help test their water after officials with both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) ignored their concerns.

The cases of Flint and Washington, Edwards explained, illustrate how the failure of government scientists to acknowledge a problem, coupled with academia's refusal to question their judgement, can drive serious public health crises.

He said:

In Flint the agencies paid to protect these people weren’t solving the problem. They were the problem. What faculty person out there is going to take on their state, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?

I don’t blame anyone, because I know the culture of academia. You are your funding network as a professor. You can destroy that network that took you 25 years to build with one word. I’ve done it. When was the last time you heard anyone in academia publicly criticize a funding agency, no matter how outrageous their behavior? We just don’t do these things.

If an environmental injustice is occurring, someone in a government agency is not doing their job. Everyone we wanted to partner said, Well, this sounds really cool, but we want to work with the government. We want to work with the city. And I’m like, You’re living in a fantasy land, because these people are the problem.

Edwards said that practicing "heroism" within the scientific community can be a lonely pursuit and that he has "lost friends" simply by asking questions.

"I grew up worshiping at the altar of science, and in my wildest dreams I never thought scientists would behave this way," he said of the Centers for Disease Control's widespread misreporting of lead levels in Washington D.C.

"When I realized what they had done, as a scientist, I was just outraged and appalled," he continued. "The only way I can construct a worldview that accommodates this is to say, These people are unscientific. Science should be about pursuing the truth and helping people. If you’re doing it for any other reason, you really ought to question your motives."

Edwards, who testified along with Flint residents before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, was recently appointed to a task force to help address the ongoing crisis.

Residents and advocacy organizations are seeking outside intervention, and a complete overhaul of the state government

Fed up with an administration whose policies caused the devastating water crisis and subsequent health epidemic, advocacy organizations and community members are calling for nothing less than a complete overhaul of the way government works in Michigan.

On Tuesday, Flint residents met with leaders of the national NAACP to draw up a "15-point priority plan" for addressing the lead-tainted water crisis. Chief among their demands is the repeal of Michigan's contentious emergency manager law, which was enacted in 2011 under Gov. Rick Snyder.

A memo (pdf) by the national civil rights group notes that throughout talks with Flint community members, "Most stridently, we heard the need for a return to democracy by repealing the Emergency Financial Manager Law, under which the string of decisions were made that brought Flint to this crisis."

As Flint native Art Reyes III explained, "The emergency manager law gave unchecked power to the governor in the name of helping these communities emerge from financial distress. But in reality, it unleashed a series of devastating austerity and privatization measures adopted in the name of progress, and took away democratic rights from poor communities of color."

Indeed, a number of the city and state officials—empowered by that very statute—who oversaw the decision to change the source of Flint's water supply were named in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Wednesday. The complaint argues that those officials repeatedly violated a number of federal laws, including the Safe Water Drinking Act, and will continue to do so without court intervention.

"Flint is Exhibit A for what happens when a state suspends democracy and installs unaccountable bean counters to run a city," said Michael J. Steinberg, legal director of the ACLU of Michigan, which filed the suit along with the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Flint resident and water activist Melissa Mays.

"In a failed attempt to save a few bucks," Steinberg continued, "state-appointed officials poisoned the drinking water of an important American city, causing permanent damage to an entire generation of its children. The people of Flint cannot trust the state of Michigan to fix this man-made disaster and that is why court oversight is critically needed."

The lawsuit asks the court to compel city and state officials to follow federal requirements for testing and treating water to control for lead and to order the prompt replacement of all lead water pipes at no cost to Flint residents. The plaintiffs also seek appropriate relief to remedy the health and medical harms to Flint residents from the lead contamination.

Since the crisis in Flint garnered national attention, the state's Republican government has received enhanced scrutiny for both causing and ignoring the lead-tainted water.

Calls for Snyder's resignation have also grown, while more than 430,000 have signed a petition advocating for his arrest.

In a column Wednesday, longtime Flint resident and filmmaker Michael Moore reiterated that demand and also argued for a complete federal government takeover of the situation, writing: "The state government cannot be trusted to get this right."

Moore continues, somewhat ironically:

So, instead of declaring a federal disaster zone, President Obama must declare the same version of martial law that Governor Snyder declared over the cities of Flint and Detroit. He must step in and appoint a federal emergency manager in the state capitol to direct the resources of both the state and federal government in saving Flint.

Meanwhile, Snyder continues to apologize for the crisis and during a press conference Wednesday announced that he requested $28 million in supplemental funding from the state legislature and secured $5 million from the Obama administration as part of a Jan. 16 federal emergency declaration.

But, Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers (USW) union, argued in an op-ed that the Flint crisis is exactly what happens when a venture capitalist, like Snyder, gets to pull the strings.

"This was not a Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy," Gerard wrote. "The tragedy in Flint was a choice. This was a values decision about what was important. Giving a break to big business was the top priority for venture capitalist Snyder. Operating a shoddy government, over-taxing pensioners and poisoning Flint’s children was the result."

]]>End Racism and DiscriminationThu, 28 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000Senate Democrats Push to Address Flint Water CrisisSenate Democrats said Wednesday they will push to address the water crisis in Flint, Michigan as part of a bipartisan energy bill being debated in the Senate.https://peopledemandingaction.org/campaigns/end-mass-criminalization-2/item/492-senate-democrats-push-to-address-flint-water-crisissenate-democrats-said-wednesday-they-will-push-to-address-the-water-crisis-in-flint-michigan-as-part-of-a-bipartisan-energy-bill-being-debated-in-the-senate
https://peopledemandingaction.org/campaigns/end-mass-criminalization-2/item/492-senate-democrats-push-to-address-flint-water-crisissenate-democrats-said-wednesday-they-will-push-to-address-the-water-crisis-in-flint-michigan-as-part-of-a-bipartisan-energy-bill-being-debated-in-the-senate

Senate Democrats said Wednesday they will push to address the water crisis in Flint, Michigan as part of a bipartisan energy bill being debated in the Senate.

Sen Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said Democratic Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan will seek to amend the energy bill to "protect children from water that is deadly or poisonous." As many as 7,000 children have been "poisoned because of lack of proper government oversight" of Flint's water supply, Durbin said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, called the situation in Flint "really, really frightening." Michigan's Republican governor, Rick Snyder, tried to "save a few bucks with the water and, in the process, poisoned lots of people," Reid said.

Flint's water became contaminated when the financially struggling city switched from the Detroit municipal system and began drawing from the Flint River in April 2014 to save money. State officials were in charge of the city at the time.

Regulators failed to ensure the new water was treated properly and lead from pipes leached into the water supply, contributing to a spike in child lead exposure. Some children's blood has tested positive for lead, a potent neurotoxin linked to learning disabilities, lower IQ and behavioral problems.

Reid said the amendment would likely focus on other municipal water supplies beyond Flint.

"We have a lot of communities around this country who have lead pipes, and a very deteriorating water system. So ... that's something we want to focus on, for sure," Reid told reporters Wednesday.

Peters and Stabenow declined to offer details of the amendment, but said an announcement was likely Thursday.

Earlier Wednesday, the pair, along with Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., proposed separate legislation to clarify the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to notify the public if a danger from lead is in their water system.

The bill would direct the EPA to notify residents and health departments if the amount of lead found in a public water system requires action, in the absence of notification by the state.

The EPA's Midwest regional director announced her resignation last week in connection with the water crisis, and EPA chief Gina McCarthy issued an emergency order directing state and city officials to take actions to protect public health. While much of the public blame has been directed at Snyder and other state officials, particularly the state Department of Environmental Quality, the EPA's Region 5 office, which covers six Great Lakes states, has also been criticized for not acting more forcefully.

The EPA has acknowledged that state officials notified the EPA last April that Flint was not treating the river water with additives to prevent corrosion from pipes. Susan Hedman, the EPA's regional chief, voiced concern to state and city officials over the next few months. But it wasn't until Oct. 16 that EPA established a task force to provide technical help — the day Flint switched back to the Detroit water system.

]]>End Racism and DiscriminationThu, 28 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000Undocumented immigrants in Flint say they’ve been denied free water and are scared to get helphttps://peopledemandingaction.org/campaigns/end-mass-criminalization-2/item/487-undocumented-immigrants-in-flint-say-they-ve-been-denied-free-water-and-are-scared-to-get-help
https://peopledemandingaction.org/campaigns/end-mass-criminalization-2/item/487-undocumented-immigrants-in-flint-say-they-ve-been-denied-free-water-and-are-scared-to-get-help

While the state government mobilizes a massive response to the water crisis in Flint, handing out bottled water and filters to residents affected by lead-contaminated tap water, undocumented residents here feel left out.

In interviews with Fusion, a half dozen undocumented people said that either they’ve been turned away from free water or are worried that they’ll be deported if they try to get help. Some who don’t speak English only learned about the problems with the water in the last few days, and have been drinking contaminated tap water for months.

Officials at some fire stations—where the National Guard is distributing free bottled water and filters—have asked residents for a form of identification. Immigrants in Michigan without legal status are unable to receive drivers licenses or state IDs.

“I went to ask for water from the fire station, and they asked for my social security number, so I left,” said Estella Arias, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. “I feel bad that I can’t get the help… I don’t want to expose my kids to lead.”

State officials say that as of Friday night, they are no longer turning anyone away for lack of identification, and were only asking in the first place in order to track where their resources are going.

But undocumented people here say that policy is not being implemented across the board. Officials at some fire stations simply hand anyone who walks in a case of water, while others demand identification.

“Once word of mouth ripples through the community that you have to have ID, it’s too late,” said Susan Reed, the managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.

Moreover, when National Guard officers go door to door to deliver water to elderly and disabled people, undocumented immigrants are unlikely to open their doors. Rumors are flying about the Obama administration’s undocumented immigration raids nationwide, and on social media, immigrants encourage one another to keep the door shut.

There’s also a lack of awareness about the water problem to begin with. Most Flint residents have known not to drink the tap water for months, at least since state officials acknowledged the elevated lead levels in October. But with no local Spanish-language radio station or TV channel, some undocumented people who don’t speak much English simply don’t know about what’s going on.

Maria, another undocumented immigrant who asked not to use her last name, said she only heard about the water problem three days ago, and had been drinking tap water regularly until then. She’s developed a bad rash on her legs, and thinks it’s from the water. Like most undocumented, though, she doesn’t have any health insurance.

If National Guard troops were to come and knock on her door, Maria said, she wouldn’t open it.

“Rule number one is never open the door,” she said. And she has good reason: three decades ago, when she lived in Texas, immigration officers came knocking. “My daughter opened the door, and they took us,” she said—her family was deported to Mexico. (“But we came back,” she added with a laugh.)

When no one answers the door at a house, officers leave a flyer with information about how to get free water delivered—but it’s only in English. The directions for using some of the free water filters, and for when to replace them, are also only in English.

Churches and advocacy groups here are mobilizing to address the problem. At the Spanish-language mass on Sunday morning, volunteers at Our Lady of Guadalupe church handed out free bottled water and filters donated by the Red Cross, no questions asked. Arias went home with a big case of water in her backseat.

“It’s a tough situation for the undocumented because they’re the ones who really need it,” said Raul Garcia, the parish council president.

Officials at another church on the city’s predominantly Latino east side—where blocks are dotted with vacant lots—also organized a neighborhood Spanish-language canvas on Sunday.

Flint’s Latino community is mostly Mexican. Advocates estimate that there are about 1,000 undocumented people in the area. In the ’50s and ’60s, many Mexicans were recruited for jobs at the General Motors plants here, and eventually brought their families with them.

Now, in a city and state that are declining in population, the bilingual Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the only Catholic churches in the area with a growing congregation.

Blanca Hernandez, an undocumented churchgoer, said she was drinking the tapwater until a few months ago, when she heard about the problem from friends. Now she uses only bottled water, even to bathe her two-month-old grandson. Her family ends up spending hundreds of dollars a month on bottled water—but she doesn’t want to go to the fire stations for free water in fear of being asked for ID.

“I’m scared,” she said over a meal of rice and beans in the church cafeteria after mass. “I just stay home, go to church, and that’s it.”

Even those who have more secure immigration status are affected. Jessica Olivares, who is married to an American citizen and finishing her adjustment of status paperwork, said that without the ability to work legally, she has struggled to pay for packs of bottled water.

“Those cases go fast,” she said. “I can’t go to school, I can’t work because of my status.”

For some, the idea that drinking water would be contaminated in the United States—the country they risked so much to find a better life in—is hard to believe.

“In Mexico we drink the water all the time and nothing happens,” Maria said. “It’s crazy that this is happening in America.”